Ludwig Quotes

Music is ... A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.

The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est. (Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over.) [Said on his deathbed]

I am my world.

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.

Only describe, don't explain.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.

The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.

To play without passion is inexcusable!

We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.

Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.

In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines In two straight lines they broke their bread And brushed their teeth and went to bed. They left the house at half past nine In two straight lines in rain or shine- The smallest one was Madeline.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

How small a thought it takes to fill a life.

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.

To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.

Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

[When asked why are numbers beautiful?] It’s like asking why is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is.

Never forget the days I spent with you. Continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours.

To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.

I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.

All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.

Life can be a misunderstanding, if we are ignorant of the right language or don’t try to learn it. « If lions could speak, we would not understand them. » says Ludwig Wittgenstein. If we make an effort, however, we could manage to understand. ( “ Life was a misunderstanding » )

Ethics and aesthetics are one.

As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate.

At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.

The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already has within it that surrender.

What can be shown, cannot be said.

If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have admit to yourself your own errors.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.

Language disguises thought.

I shall seize fate by the throat.

I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.

Tell them I've had a wonderful life.

I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.

It seemed unthinkable for me to leave the world forever before I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce

Good Morning, on July 7 My thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved I can only live wholly with you or not at all- Be calm my life, my all. Only by calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together. Oh continue to love me, never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved. Ever Thine Ever Mine Ever Yours

What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

ever thine, ever mine, ever ours

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.

When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.

I love a tree more than a man.

You can't think decently if you're not willing to hurt yourself

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

If anyone is unwilling to descend into himself, because this is too painful, he will remain superficial in his writing. . . If I perform to myself, then it’s this that the style expresses. And then the style cannot be my own. If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit.

Don't think, but look! (PI 66)

Just improve yourself; that is the only thing you can do to better the world.

The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.

This is how philosophers should salute each other: ‘Take your time.

There are and always will be thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven!

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness.

I will take fate by the throat; it will never bend me completely to its will.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

It is my wish that you may have at better and freer life than I have had. Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience; this was what upheld me in time of misery.

Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.

Socialism is an alternative to capitalism as potassium cyanide is an alternative to water.

Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult 'What is that?

The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed. I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally become clear to me - or else that I needn’t live much longer.

The eternal life is given to those who live in the present.

An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.

It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.

Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.

Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do.

Tell me," Wittgenstein's asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?

My misfortune is doubly painful to me because it will result in my being misunderstood. For me there can be no recreation in the company of others, no intelligent conversation, no exchange of information with peers; only the most pressing needs can make me venture into society. I am obliged to live like an outcast.

Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interest of everyone hangs on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.

The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different. I was thinking of using as a motto for my book a quotation from King Lear: 'I’ll teach you differences'. ... 'You’d be surprised' wouldn’t be a bad motto either.

The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.

That it doesn’t strike us at all when we look around us, move about in space, feel our own bodies, etc. etc., shows how natural these things are to us. We do not notice that we see space perspectivally or that our visual field is in some sense blurred towards the edges. It doesn’t strike us and never can strike us because it is the way we perceive. We never give it a thought and it’s impossible we should, since there is nothing that contrasts with the form of our world.What I wanted to say is it’s strange that those who ascribe reality only to things and not to our ideas move about so unquestioningly in the world as idea and never long to escape from it.